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July 13, 2005

The worst of all possible outcomes

Police investigation suggests mass murder in London "cannot be dismissed as the work of foreign extremists brought up in oppressive states suffering from severe deprivation." The Guardian describes this as "the worst of all possible outcomes".

It is the worst of all possible outcomes. Last week's terrorist attacks on London were the work of suicide bombers - the first such attacks on British soil. Worse still, it looks as though they were committed by British Muslims.

I was baffled by this claim when I read it last night and am still not certain what to say about it. How could the outcome of scores of dead and hundreds maimed be anything other than the worst possible outcome? Given the countless millions living in conditions of severe deprivation under oppressive regimes whose legitimacy the Guardian has consistently endorsed, excused or leant moral support it is a wonder their offices are not a daily target of bombers, would be martyrs or otherwise. Unless, of course, the Guardian's assumption of motive is wrong on its face (it is).

These are not the first suicide bombers to engage in mass murder and there is no surprise that the jihadis should carry out their repeatedly stated aims. I cannot believe the death of London commuters is any more senseless and wrong than the murder of children collecting candy in Iraq that George Galloway so evidently glories in or the murders of countless people in Israel that London's Mayor, Ken Livingston has turned a blind eye to in the past. These are not even the first British suicide bombers (Richard Reid, Saajid Badat, Asif Hanif and Omar Sharif should leap to mind) though from media reaction it would appear the murderous acts of British citizens do not carry much symbolic weight if they are carried out in Israel.

CNN insists on calling this the first attack of its type in Western Europe with emphasis on the shock we are meant to feel this should happen a world away from Beslan or Moscow or Istanbul. This may be the case but it is by no means the first attempted suicide attack. The only conclusion I can reach is that this is the worst of all possible outcomes only if by "outcome" we mean some answer that would allow all too many people to cling to their cherished shield of virtue and the idea that utterly senseless killings can somehow be made to do the work of a progressive morality play.

Update: Take this hateful rant the Guardian chose to publish, for example. British Muslims are "sassier" now and so are going to get all in your face about how this is the fault of... well, no surprise what this fellow thinks. Fallujah is his grievance of choice though I doubt his sympathy stretches to the Americans mobbed, slaughtered, set alight and suspended from a bridge. Or indeed, to the lives of women or, heaven forbid, Christians, Jews or gay people in this embattled paradise. The idea that a religious, political or sexual minority would be allowed to live, let alone voice opposition, in Fallujah under the "insurgents" is so preposterous it hardly crosses the mind and yet this Guardian trainee journalist thinks he can garner sympathy for the fascist cause mere days after their comrades have murdered free people, including Muslims, a mile from his office. Worse yet, he is probably right to think he will find a sympathetic ear. His crocodile tears for the people of London are done with by paragraph two. Anyone imagining what rhetoric might have moved the murderers to act, or what ideology might have served to steel their hearts, need look no further than the pages of this quality broadsheet.

Update: Tony Blair has promised to follow the French precedent and deport Muslim preachers who speaking "what he described as their 'evil and extreme ideology', springing from a 'perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of Islam'." Imagine the outcry at the first such deportation. So who is right? The trainee Guardian journalist who believes mass murder is inevitable but British imams are too timid to call down the wrath of God on England for the liberation of Fallujah? Or Mr. Blair who believes it is a minority of imams who are the problem? Let us hope Mr. Blair's analysis is correct.

Update: I am not surprised to learn this Guardian trainee journalist has elsewhere called for a global Caliphate. It says something I can still be shocked the Guardian would provide a voice to this evil when there are still victims of that would be Caliphate still smouldering in the Underground (via lgf).

Posted by Ghost of a flea at July 13, 2005 07:31 AM

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